1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
A representative example of a liquid ejecting apparatus is an ink jet recording apparatus. Ink jet recording apparatuses include serial-head ones and line-head ones. The former produces prints by moving ink jet recording heads mounted on a carriage, while the latter does so by ejecting ink through nozzles arranged over the same width as the entire width of the recording medium used. A typical ink jet recording head incorporates actuators, each of which is composed of a pressure chamber and a piezoelectric element. The pressure chamber communicates with a nozzle opening for discharging ink droplets and has a diaphragm. The piezoelectric element vibrates in a flexural mode to deform the diaphragm and compress the ink in the pressure chamber, whereby ink droplets are discharged through the nozzle opening.
Inks containing tabular grains have been used with ink jet recording heads of this type (e.g., see JP-A-2011-195747). Printing with an ink containing tabular grains provides the resulting prints with glitter because the tabular grains reflect light.
The use of an ink containing tabular grains to produce glitter prints may, however, cause problems in continuous discharge such as slow discharge from some nozzles in the recording head or variations in weight from droplet to droplet, making it difficult to continuously discharge the ink in a stable manner. The term continuous discharge, as used herein, refers to discharging ink through a single set of nozzles for a continuous period of about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Although liquid ejecting apparatuses today are not used in such a way in usual applications; however, their discharge capabilities should become more advanced to support continuous discharge.